Jeannette Rankin

Jeannette Rankin (11 June 1880-18 May 1973) was a member of the US House of Representatives (R-MT) from 4 March 1917 to 3 March 1919 (succeeding Tom Stout and preceding John M. Evans/Carl W. Riddick) and from MT 1 from 3 January 1941 to 3 January 1943 (succeeding Jacob Thorkelson and preceding Mike Mansfield). Rankin was the first woman to hold federal office in the United States, and she was known for her advocacy of pacifism and women's rights.

Biography
Jeannette Rankin was born in Missoula County, Montana in 1880, and she became involved with the women's suffrage movement during the early 20th century. In 1910, she successfully lobbied for Washington to allow for women to vote, and she spoke in favor of female suffrage in front of the Montana state legislature in 1911; three years later, Montana granted women the right to vote. In 1916, she was elected to the US House of Representatives as a Republican Party member, and she held progressive views. During World War I, she supported pacifism, opposing President Woodrow Wilson's declaration of war against the German Empire in 1917. She left the US Congress in 1919, and she resumed her feminist and pacifist activism during the Interwar period. Rankin was then elected to Congress in 1940, and she was the only member of Congress to oppose the 8 December 1941 declaration of war on Japan after the Attack on Pearl Harbor. After leaving Congress in 1943, she again resumed her activism, studying Mahatma Gandhi's pacifist movement in India and continuing to support world peace during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s. Too consumed by her work to marry, she died a bachelorette in Carmel, California in 1973 at the age of 92.